Most runners want to get faster. Not everyone can afford to hire a coach, and not everyone has time to train for a marathon, but most runners hope to set new PR’s on a regular basis. This is absolutely possible, but you need to know how to direct your time. Most people have full-time jobs. You probably do, or you’re a full-time parent. Your time is limited; so, you need to know the best most efficient way to spend your running training time.

In this episode, I explain three things that virtually every runner at every level can do to run faster.

It’s the little things that often have the greatest impact, and so it is with the concept of focusing on the fact that when running, you are always, 100 percent of the time, putting the full weight of your body on just one foot or the other. Oddly, you don’t hear much about this, and if you go to the gym, you’ll notice that most people are doing exercises with both feet firmly planted on the floor.

Think about it. Doesn’t it make more sense to stand on just one leg at a time, imitating, or more closely imitating, the running stride?

Keep this simple concept top of mind, all the time, when cross training, and you’ll be able to make minor changes, choose different exercises, or different ways to perform exercises, different activities, or different ways to perform the activities you perform regularly. It won’t require major changes, but it will pay major benefits.

In this episode, I discuss all the elements that come into play and how to change your activities to improve muscle balance, decrease injuries, and benefit your running performance. Perhaps most significant is that you’ll feel better, more even, more stable, and stronger, when you run because your running form will, naturally, be improved, increasing your comfort level.

We all think of ourselves as intelligent runners, of course, but even the most experienced, veteran runners sometimes lose sight of the wise and effective path to their goals. Why does this happen? I think because we get caught up in the here and now, the ‘today,’ instead of keeping our eyes on the long term goal, not just our long term running goals but sometimes even our life goals. Yes, running can sometimes distract us from our most far-reaching life goals. That’s bad, but on the flip side, running can make us into the person we need to be to achieve those goals, right?

After all, at the most basic level, we want running to keep us alive and healthy, but beyond that, we set running goals for the purpose of making us into stronger people, finding out what we are, who we are, how much we can handle and overcome.

With this episode, I want to take you back to square one to evaluate whether you’re doing the most basic things to facilitate your trip toward both your short term goals and your most distant goals. I break it down into just five pillars. There is a big difference between an intelligent runner, training with wisdom, and just focusing on the next five miles.

Don’t get me wrong, to some extent, that’s just what you need to do, focus on this run, absolutely, but I just mean that it’s a mistake to become so focused on those next miles that we forget where we want those miles to carry us, the reward we’re working toward.

I hope this podcast will facilitate your running journey and that that will help you reach the destination of your life journey.

This is it! You’ve been learning about what to do for nine days. Think of this as graduation day, the day you get the last, but most critical, piece of the puzzle. Today, you find out exactly what you should do, and I mean you, personally, should do on Day 1 of your running journey. Today, is you diagnostic run.

In this podcast, I explain what to do to find out how far you should run during each running segment of your walk to run mile, which is the distance you should start with.

I also explain how to progress from there, the three variables, and the details regarding the decisions you’ll be making in deciding what to change and when.

I’m excited for you because this is, of all the secrets I’ve imparted, perhaps the most crucial one, because if you try to start your running training with too much, you’ll likely never succeefd

I’ve been hearing the phrase, ‘turtle power,’ for years, always from ‘slower’ runners, usually in an upbeat, positive way, an “I’m fine with that” way, but sometimes they utter the words apologetically, and that makes me sad.

Often, these are beginner runners, but not always. It is my hope that after listening to this podcast, no one listening will ever feel bad, in any way, about being a slower runner. What is slow, anyway? It’s all relative, isn’t it? When an Olympian runs a 6 minute mile, it’s an off day. Most runners will never see the faster side of 9 minutes, and some will always run 12 minute miles, and I sure hope those people don’t apologize for that because there is no reason to be the least bit apologetic. To me, that’s like apologizing because you have brown hair.

If anyone ever makes you feel like your pace is too slow, then that person is just being unkind and isn’t worth worrying about. You have as much right to go your own pace and be happy with it as any other runner has a right to go the pace that is comfortable to them.

After all, running is an individual sport. One of the most enjoyable elements of running is that anyone can do it; you don’t need to be a gifted athlete, but I sure hope you do realize that anyone at any pace is an athlete.

Turtle Power is the mantra of slower runners everywhere, and so it should be. I hope it’s empowering. If you’re a slower runner, and since you’re a beginner, you probably are, own it; don’t apologize for it. Turtle runners unite!

Weight loss or management plays a role in the life of virtually every runner. Either they start running to lose weight or they’ve alreaady lost weight, and the want to become a runner to help them maintain that weight loss or they’re worried that their weight will gradually creep up if they don’t get lots of exercise. [Read more…]

The single most common beginner runner complaint I hear from beginner runners is that they can’t breathe. Often new runners say they struggle to breathe because they feel like they’re breathing through a straw; they say they just can’t get enough air.

If you’ve ever been in that situation, you will find answers in this episode. That may be the number 1 problem that you know you must overcome to be a successs, to be able to build endurance and run for miles. It just makes sense, that if you can’t breathe, you can’t run very far and you can’t be comfortable for even a few minutes. So, this is a problem we must fix and do it now.

For a more extensive discussion of this topic, please check out this earlier podcast episode: